When you are actively using the plugin already, the bbPress admin area is under Settings/Forums. When you initially wish to install bbPress sitewide forums, you do that from the BuddyPress Tab, under Forums.

Setup is rather easy, and you can actually use both bbPress sitewide as well as the original BuddyPress Group Forums. Follow these important step however:

1) Install Group Forums as usual, from BuddyPress. Instead of using the original slug of “Forums”, please instead create a new page called “Group Forums” (or anything other than “Forums”), and select that as the active page to host Group Forums;

2) Go to your Pages area in WP and DELETE any “Forums” page. Be SURE to also delete it permanently from the TRASH because otherwise the slug is still being reserved and can’t be used by sitewide forums;

3) If you have not done so yet, go into BuddyPress tab and the Forums sub menu, and click on the option to install bbPress Sitewide Forums;

4) Go into your Appearance / Menus menu and manually create new menu item that has “/forums” as the url and whatever name you prefer (such as “Forums”). Save this menu item and add it to your primary or other menus.

5) Go into Settings/Permalinks and hit “Save” to be sure you have updated your permalink structure.

When you reload your page you will find that you now have bbPress AND BuddyPress Group Forums. Voila!

Thanks a lot, yeah I figured that out. I was confused between the 1.x and 2.x versions. Then I realised the 2.x version is basically a completely new thing that just kept the name, and is no longer stand alone.

We’ve done a little tutorial video to show how you can setup either a BuddyPress Group Forum, a SiteWide bbPress 2.0 Forum, or a custom hybrid forum page using shortcodes. You can have all three at one time. Hope this helps